Thank God, not another movie in which a wizened old codger
waxes poetic about the power of stories. While Tim Burton’s
Big Fish, adapted for screen by John August from the
1998 book by Daniel Wallace, does feature a codger, the dying
Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), it forsakes philosophical monologues
in favor of a series of colorful, mind-boggling stories about
Edward, as told by Edward himself. This incessant stretching
of truths and reimagining of the lines that bound their existences
drives Edward’s son Will (Billy Crudup) so crazy that he deserts
the family to become a UPI reporter based in Paris. Whereas
one Bloom embellishes just about everything, the other sticks
to the straight facts, and this marked difference in approach
speaks volumes about deeper issues pervading this father-son
conflict.

When Will and his pregnant, Parisian-born wife Josephine (Marion
Cotillard) are summoned home by mom Sandra (Jessica Lange)
to be on hand for Edward’s final days, the stage is set for
the inevitable showdown. Josephine is in the final trimester
of her pregnancy, and Will is determined to find out the “truth”
about Edward in order to give his new child concrete proofs.
When his quest is thwarted by yet another tall tale, Will
erupts, furious that his father will not reveal his true self
to him at this late stage in the game. Edward, for his part,
retorts that his stories have, indeed, revealed his true self,
and that Will is just blind to it.

In between such arguments, Burton evokes Edward’s most fantastic
stories with a visual sensibility that can only be his. We
see the young Edward (Ewan McGregor) confront death, in the
eye of a witch no less, and decide that his aspirations demand
a greater world stage. In the course of his lifetime, we see
him confront a giant, work in a circus headed by ringmaster
(and werewolf) Danny DeVito, take on dangerous assignments
in Korea, discover an otherworldly town called Spectre, and,
most profoundly, fall in love with Sandra Templeton (Allison
Lohman). The scene in which the earnest young Bloom calls
to Sandra’s window, and upon opening it she spies him standing
amid a field of buttery daffodils, flowers that he’s planted
for her, is sweet and majestic at once. The viewer can’t help
but believe Edward’s love for Sandra, and hope that she, too,
shares his robust enthusiasm.

Underlying the tension between Edward and Will is the idea
that the father, as a traveling salesman, was never home,
but August’s script doesn’t delve much into this potential
pool of conflict. In fact, while Lange’s role is inexplicably
limited, she never conveys any sense of anger, resentment
or wishfulness about the choices she has made; indeed, marrying
Edward seems to have kept her perpetually joyous, forever
young. Perhaps we are supposed to wonder at questions like
why is Edward so dang addicted to storytelling, when, as a
husband and father, he should be trading in the hard questions
of life. What a drag. Better that in Big Fish, we see
a man who is providing his family with not just an income
and a home with a white picket fence, but the capacity to
dream big and to leave an indelible imprint on all who know
him.

One
Film To Thrill Them All

The
Lord of the Rings: The Return
of the KingDirected
by Peter Jackson

Whoever would’ve thought, three years and a month ago, that
the most heartening moment in recent cinema would involve
two make-believe little persons clambering on a scorched plateau.
But when indefatigable Sam (Sean Astin) hoists sick-to-his-soul
Frodo (Elijah Wood) upon his back to carry him the last few
steps to certain death in a volcanic inferno, The Return
of the King achieves the kind of heart-tugging heroism
that can catapult a film to Favorite Movie of All Time status.
Of course, director Peter Jackson had two previous films in
which to establish the importance of the hobbits reaching
fiery Mount Doom—nothing less than the salvation of Middle-earth
hangs in the balance—and yet the concluding installment of
his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is full of
such interludes, all of them hard won by the filmmaker’s extraordinary
commitment and talent. As indomitable as a hobbit, as bold
as an elf prince and as resourceful as a wizard with a bubbling
cauldron and a tome of spells, Jackson has pulled it off—the
“it” being J.R.R. Tolkien’s three-volume source novel, a beguiling
blend of literary scholarship and prodigious imagination once
thought impossible to reproduce on screen.

That audiences should rejoice in the tenacity of Sam, Frodo,
and the other strange folk of a fantasy universe is a credit
to the director’s dramatic acuity. With its mastodon cavalry,
reptilian flying monsters, and a gigantic, man-eating arachnid
named Shelob, the film is a wonder (in the truest sense of
the word) of wildly creative special effects. But what enriches
the film’s jaw-dropping spectacle is its human approach to
monumental conflict. The personalities of the protagonists
shine through every clashing adventure, even when their defenses
are broken by a battalion of iron-clad war trolls.

As did The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return
opens with a prologue from the distant past: The (CGI) creature
Gollum (Andy Serkis), way back when he was hobbity Smeagol,
wrests possession of an ancient ring of infinite power and
is consumed by it. The story then picks up with the quest
to destroy the One Ring in the fires where it was forged.
As Sam and Frodo get closer to Mount Doom, Gollum, their tortured
guide, becomes more treacherous. At the same time, Aragorn
(Viggo Mortensen) must rally an army large enough to hold
off the fiendish forces of Sauron, the dread lord of the ring.
As those forces (Jackson has an apparently limitless capacity
for conjuring grotesque opponents) march on the fortress-city
of Gondor, the last best hope of Middle-earth, Gandalf the
wizard (Ian McKellen) rides ahead to warn the city’s stern
ruler, Denethor (John Noble). But Denethor is going mad, Sauron’s
armies vastly outnumber the allies, and Sam and Frodo are
being led into a gruesome trap.

Although The Return is mostly one battle after another
until a humongous climactic battle, the trilogy’s intertwining
plot lines converge with a thrilling sense of urgency, validating
Jackson’s $300- million-plus gamble in shooting the three
films at once, creating what is basically a nine-hour film
(with yearlong intermissions). Protagonists who’ve struggled
against overwhelming odds and evils in the previous installments
now come into their own with a depth of development not possible
in a shorter or less seamless work. In the quiet before the
storm of an orc attack, Gandalf consoles an anxious Pippin
(Billy Boyd) with an ethereal description of the afterlife.
In the heat of a monstrous battle, King Theoden (Bernard Hill)
says farewell to his warrior foster-daughter, Eowyn (Miranda
Otto), with a stoicism that could bring a tear to Odin. Away
in Rohan, Aragorn musters enough faith in his predestination
to brave a stronghold of the undead. No one has ever returned
from this mountain pass, but that doesn’t stop Aragorn’s stalwart
companions Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom)
from accompanying him on his dire path, a situation that easily
accommodates such mytho-poetic utterings as “The very warmth
of my blood seems stolen away.”

Along with characters who are sometimes an improvement on
their print versions—a hot-blooded Eowyn, a conflicted Faramir
(David Wenham), and Gimli’s gallows bravado—Jackson summons
the story forth with some of the most breathtaking sequences
on celluloid, among them a spectacular aerial view of the
lighting of the beacons of Gondor, in which the camera appears
to literally fly from one mountaintop to another as they burst
into flame over a distance of several hundred miles. Equally
astonishing is the panorama of Minas Tirith, an elaborate
citadel carved out of a cliff. In a bravura tracking shot,
Gandalf ascends the city’s seven spiraling levels at full
gallop. And to have Frodo lifted to his feet by a vision of
Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is sheer inspiration. Purists can
quibble (especially concerning Sam’s excess of brutality toward
Gollum), but this is filmmaking of a dizzyingly high order.

But just as enthralling as the director’s brilliant visualizations
is his mindfulness of Tolkien’s chivalric world view, in which
humility triumphs over pride and mercy is the ultimate antidote
to evil. Which is why the peaceable, unquenchably optimistic
hobbits are the true bravehearts. And just as the Fellowship
assists Frodo’s quest in ways that are not always obvious,
so too, does Jackson stand on the accomplishments of an impassioned
cast—notably McKellen’s Shakespeare-worthy wizard, Astin’s
self-effacing Sam, and Serkis’ amazing voicing and motioning
for the incredibly convincing Gollum—as well as a whole other
dimension of enchantment created by Howard Shore’s magnificent
and inventively evocative score. Let the trumpets sound, and
the Oscar nods roll in: these are the great deeds of our cinematic
age.

—Ann
Morrow

A
Little Less Free

Chasing
LibertyDirected
by Andy Cadiff

Pity Anna Foster (Mandy Moore), teenage daughter of the president
of the United States. Sure, she’s wealthy, smart and beautiful,
but she can’t get a date. Seems that every time a boy starts
to get close to her—you know, like over dinner at a swanky
upscale restaurant— something unexpected happens, and overprotective
Secret Service agents swarm in. The date freaks out, and poor
Anna never even gets a goodnight kiss.

After one such particularly disastrous encounter, Anna strikes
a bargain with her father: She’ll jump through all the diplomatic
hoops she’s supposed to on an upcoming trip to Prague, if
he’ll let her go to a concert with just two agents in tow.
(Anna has good taste—it’s a Roots show.) Daddy, however, sends
a platoon of agents, and Anna freaks. With the help of Ben
(Matthew Goode) a handsome Brit bystander on a motorcycle,
she escapes. There’s one hitch, though: Ben’s an agent too,
and she isn’t really free. There’s nothing left but for the
pair to fall in love against the background of gorgeous European
locations.

Romantic comedy is very hard to do. Director Andy Cadiff has
just the right touch, and makes all these contrivances seem
as light as a feather. Moore, the former pop tart, is coming
into her own as both a star and an actress. (The opening sequence,
with Moore trying on a series of outfits for a big date, screams
“Look at me I’m a movie star.” And she is.) She’s also cultivating
an image that is the opposite of her former rivals Britney
and Christina: Moore doesn’t want to be dirty (when
Anna says she’s a virgin, you believe her). The script is
reasonably clever, and the supporting cast (particularly Jeremy
Piven and Annabella Sciorra as a pair of bickering agents)
is strong. Against all odds, Chasing Liberty is charming—up
to a point. That point is when Anna’s character is tested
in the real world, and she’s faced with true freedom.

When Anna finds out that Matthew is really an agent, she is,
naturally, heartbroken. Lighting out on her own, she immediately
runs into trouble. We’re supposed to believe that although
she’s been traveling unrecognized halfway across Europe, suddenly
everyone knows her. Obnoxious Americans and creepy Germans
close in; Anna is helpless. This smart, resourceful young
woman breaks down just like a little girl. Matthew comes to
the rescue, delivering her back into the protective bubble.

Without going into the gory details, suffice to say that Anna
learns to accept, and appreciate, her cocoon. Liberty, as
it turns out, is just a word in one of her daddy’s speeches.

—Shawn
Stone

Matrons
Gone Wild

Calendar
GirlsDirected
by Nigel Cole

Based on a recent true story, Calendar Girls is a very
amusing British trifle in the tradition of Waking Ned Divine
and Saving Grace—meaning that most of the humor
concerns prim English villagers of a certain age tweaking
expectations with their naughty behavior. The “calendar girls,”
as they come to be known, are middle-age members of a Yorkshire
ladies’ club who pose nude for a calendar to raise money for
the local hospital. This racy brainstorm comes from brash
Chris (Helen Mirren), who is notorious for trying to liven
up the club with such bad ideas as a vodka-tasting night.
But her best friend, Annie (Julie Walters), whose husband
died at the hospital, is all for it, and some of the other
ladies are surprisingly game. As the pudgy church organist
puts it, “I’m 55 years old. If I don’t get ’em out now, when
will I?” There are obstacles, however, not least of them the
hiring of a photographer who can work with women who undress
in the dark even for their husbands.

The stately Mirren is a natural doing saucy (she’s the only
one who actually goes topless) while the rest of the cast
play up their matronly caricatures (the stoical widow, the
no-nonsense aristo, the mousy housewife neglected by her husband)
with piquant wit. The photographer is not a devilishly sexy,
supportive, and slightly younger man as expected, but an inexperienced
bruiser who is more inhibited than his subjects. Director
Nigel Cole has developed a lighter, wryer touch since his
overly twee Saving Grace, and the calendar itself is
a rip: The “pin-ups” are engaged in such genteel pursuits
as fruit pressing, painting, and arranging a tier of frosted
buns, with the rated-R bits humorously hidden. And yet it’s
suggestive enough to be believable as a runaway best-seller.

The film takes a turn for the obvious when the ladies are
flown to Los Angeles for a publicity junket, where they frolic
glamorously on the beach and encounter a scarily trendy art
director. All the attention provokes a Turning Point Lite
argument between Chris and Annie over their respective star
tripping, an unnecessary downer. But by then, the audience
has had such a good time, it can wait until the calendar gals
get back to Yorkshire for a perfectly droll ending.